This course addresses recorded vocal performances and the technologies used to highlight and support them in modern record production and mixes. Most of us know that vocals serve as the focal point of modern recordings but many do not know the tools used or when the tools are used best in modern record production.
The course begins with simple vocal placement in a mix, where you will also learn the fundamentals of compression and equalization. You’ll further study delays and reverbs before moving to advanced concepts in audio editing, synthetic processing, automatic & graphic pitch correction, time compression, time expansion, flex and elastic audio.
Through analysis and/or hands on projects that the students will post for peer review, the student will gain an understanding of the many choices available to modern record producers as they record and mix with a modern tool set. You’ll see, in action, the Vocoder, Auto-Tune, Melodyne, Elastic Audio, Flex Time, VocAlign, tempo based editing and a host of other file modification protocols that are readily available on most Digital Audio Workstations. This course gives students a thorough look at the expanded choices that have risen in the art of vocal production as a result of these modern tools.
The goal of the course is to help interested novices understand the recordings they are listening to, performers find an expanded language for their recorded voices and for vocal producers to be able to create musically artistic visualizations using singers as their paintbrushes.

FD

Nice and interesting course about vocal production. Great tips and information in an introduction way. Amazing for first steps in music production.

AT

Aug 31, 2017

Filled StarFilled StarFilled StarFilled StarFilled Star

Great course with a lot of good information. Now I just have to work on putting what I learned into actual practice in the studio.

À partir de la leçon

Artificial Vocal Design: How Vocal Producers “Sweeten” the Creation

In this lesson, we will lean less on the vocalist and more on tools that can be used to change the way we listen to vocals in music. You will now understand how delays and reverbs have been used in the music you love and their relationship to time and tempo. Your desire to try out some of these techniques will be piqued by the time you finish this lesson.

Enseigné par

Prince Charles Alexander

Professor

Transcription

We'll start this from the place we left off in our last segment. From bar 27 I'll play, and we'll listen to a mono delay. [MUSIC] I changed my tempo to 120 beats per minute so the math would be a little be easier for you. 120 into 60,000 is 500 milliseconds. That quarter note is represented there in 500 milliseconds. I'm going to mute this, open up a new aux, a stereo aux. And put A stereo delay, actually let me caps that, Across that second aux. Let's go to our mix window. We'll open up Multichannel plug-in > Delay. This unit has a left side and a right side. We'll dial in a quarter note there and a quarter note there. The input to this track will be two inputs. And we can make it Bus 5 and 6. Or Bus 7 and 8, stereo pair. Go to our first track and create a send that will send out a Bus 7 and 8. I'll now automate this To delay at that same phrase. [MUSIC] I'll play it back, add a little bit of feedback, so it will repeat a few times. [MUSIC] And if you really listen to what I've done, I'll play it one more time, I've got 500 milliseconds on one side, 500 milliseconds on the other side. Let's listen. [MUSIC] The delay is in the middle, it's not left or right. The left side is panned to the left. The right side is panned to the right. And in the mix window, you can see that those two faders are panned, left and right. This is a stereo delay unit. It's not stereo delay yet because there's no difference between the left and the right signal. I can go in and manually change this to 501. And listen. [MUSIC] You can hear that shift. Let's put 20 milliseconds on there. [MUSIC] Let's go back to 500 milliseconds. [MUSIC] Right in the middle. The great thing about this delay unit is that you can use the groove parameter to create your offset. And it will stay in sync and stay doubled. So when I wrote in 501 manually, The quarter note turned off and it was relying on my manual sync. If I sync myself up and Just do a groove instead, 2%, I'll do 1%. There's a shift, but it still recognizes this shift as part of the quarter note resolution. The pure quarter note is 500 milliseconds. But this 1% groove offset will give me just that amount of steorization I need. [MUSIC] And I can get a little bit wider on both sides. That is about 17 milliseconds of differences between the left and the right. Let's listen to that one. So I'm going to plus 3 on one side, variation of plus 3%. And plus 3% of 500 is going to give me 503.7 milliseconds. And a -3% on the other side, -3% of 500 is going to give me 496.3. Let's listen to that. [MUSIC] So I could literally listen to my Vocal In a mono fashion with one delay unit. [MUSIC] And then in my next chorus, listen to my vocal in a stereo fashion. [MUSIC] This stereo relationship will stay intact even when I change the tempo. Let's get our transport, and change the tempo back to 92 beats per minute. And play from bar 27 again. [MUSIC] Notice the delay times have changed. Instead of centering around 500, they're centering around 652. 3% slower than 652 is 657, minus 3%, or 3% faster than 652 is 647. Understanding all artificial time-based concepts can create new pictures in your stereo field. The tempo-based relationships can give you an idea of exactly what to do with the millisecond's window in your delay units. Let's look at another concept.